Exclusive: images and testimony from the January uprising, when Iranian security forces are believed to have killed thousands of men, women and children who had flocked on to the streets
After imposing a nationwide internet blackout, the Iranian regime appears to have largely obscured the mass killing of protesters. However, a photographer in Tehran has managed to share their documentation of what happened, along with the testimony of those who joined in and survived the protests.
Diplomats in Havana are preparing for an alternative Trump tactic: the country being starved until people take to the streets and the US can step in
Among the verdant gardens of Havana’s diplomatic quarter, Siboney, ambassadors from countries traditionally allied to the United States are expressing increasing frustration with Washington’s attempt to unseat Cuba’s government, while simultaneously drawing up plans to draw down their missions.
Cuba is in crisis. Already reeling from a four-year economic slump, worsened by hyper-inflation and the migration of nearly 20% of the population, the 67-year-old communist government is at its weakest. After Washington’s successful military operation against Cuba’s ally Venezuela at the beginning of January, the US administration is actively seeking regime change.
Continue reading...Does it only affect weak people? Is work always the cause? Burnout myths, busted by the experts
Once, after surviving yet another round of redundancies in a former job, I did something very odd. I turned off the lights in my room and lay face-down on the bed, unable to move. Rather than feeling relief at having escaped the axe, I was exhausted and numb. I’m not the only one. Fatigue, apathy and hopelessness are all textbook signs of burnout, a bleak phenomenon that has come to define many of our working lives. In 2025, a report from Moodle found that 66% of US workers had experienced some kind of burnout, while a Mental Health UK survey found that one in three adults came under high levels of pressure or stress in the previous year. Despite the prevalence of burnout, plenty of misconceptions around it persist. “Everybody thinks it’s some sort of disease or medical condition,” says Christina Maslach, the psychology professor who was the first to study the syndrome in the 1970s. “But it’s actually a response to chronic job stressors – a stress response.” Here we separate the facts from the myths.
Continue reading...It’s possible this is a platonic relationship, but your concerns are valid and your husband isn’t providing any reassurance
My husband and I are in our 60s. We have been married for 40 years, some of it happily, some not so much. Our children are grown up and gone, and we have recently retired. Some of our tensions over the years have been around my husband’s tendency to be undermining and belittling. He claims not to understand why I might find certain things upsetting, yet refuses to engage with couples counselling (apparently I would tell lies). We have muddled through and mostly get on well now, though he dislikes most of my friends and siblings, and won’t socialise with them. To be fair, he is self-contained and doesn’t seem to need friends in the way I do – he has one friend.
A few months ago, an ex-colleague got in touch with my husband and asked to meet for coffee. They met, had a long lunch, and my husband mentioned a few weeks later that they were arranging to meet again as he had enjoyed the catchup. I was a bit thrown. I found it odd that she couldn’t confide in her partner or friends, but my husband exploded and we had one of our worst, most vicious arguments in years. He accused me of not wanting him to have friends (the opposite is true) and threw up the fact that I have platonic male friends; true, but my male friends and I go back 30-plus years and we don’t meet one-to-one. This just feels a bit out of character and potentially inappropriate.
Continue reading...Opposition challenger Péter Magyar is ahead in the polls on a promise of hope. Orbán is betting on fear of war to stay in power
After 16 years of uninterrupted power, Viktor Orbán is facing his biggest electoral challenge. For years Hungary’s prime minister has spun weak policy performance as success. The rise of a rival, Péter Magyar, and the opposition Tisza party has exposed the limits of that strategy.
The economy is stagnating, despite repeated promises of a long-awaited takeoff. Over the past decade and a half, Hungary has slipped from being one of central and eastern Europe’s strongest performers to one of its weakest. Public services, from healthcare to transport, are widely seen as neglected, and Policy Solutions surveys show that voters have noticed. Hungary is not alone in facing a cost of living crisis, but comparisons offer little consolation to voters who were assured that Orbán’s model would deliver exceptional results.
András Bíró-Nagy is a senior research fellow at the ELTE Centre for Social Sciences in Budapest and director of Policy Solutions. He is the author of The Path of Hungary’s EU Membership
Continue reading...Self-reliance is often encouraged over asking others for help in the modern world. But doing everything yourself can be a sign that you are scared of intimacy
When a relative was seriously ill and in intensive care for more than a month, Cianne Jones stepped in. “I took it upon myself to be that person in the hospital every single day – chasing doctors, taking notes, making sure I understood why they were doing things.” It was so stressful, she says, that at one point her hair started falling out, but she ploughed on.
It was Jones’s therapist who gently questioned whether she was going to ask for help. Jones laughs. “The hair falling out didn’t suggest to me that I needed help, it was somebody else looking in and saying that.” She has a large, close family who would have helped immediately – and did, once Jones asked – it’s just that it didn’t occur to her to ask. “I had taken that role on: ‘I’m just going to get everything done.’ I just took off, and that was it.”
Continue reading.../s3/static.nrc.nl/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/14223754/150226SPO_2031591614_femke.jpg)
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Meer dan de helft van de Nederlanders steunt delen van de rechtse MAGA-ideologie van de Amerikaanse president Donald Trump. Dat blijkt uit een onderzoek van instituut Clingendael. 54 procent van de ondervraagden gelooft dat de 'westerse beschaving', waarbij de definitie daarvan aan henzelf is gelaten, bedreigd wordt. Een grote groep staat kritisch tegenover migratie en progressieve ideeën.
PVV-, FvD-, JA21- en BBB-stemmers maken zich het meest zorgen over bedreiging van de westerse beschaving. Ook VVD-aanhangers delen deze angst, maar in mindere mate, terwijl CDA-stemmers verdeeld zijn over het onderwerp. D66- en GroenLinks-PvdA-kiezers voelen zich het minst bedreigd.
MAGA, dat staat voor Make America Great Again, bestaat volgens Clingendael uit stromingen met verschillende ideeën over wat 'Great' betekent. Zo gaat het christelijk nationalisme ervan uit dat Amerika weer een diep christelijk land zou moeten zijn, terwijl de stroming alt-right ruimte biedt aan mensen die de liberale rechtsorde radicaal afwijzen. Volgens het instituut is er 'reden tot zorg' over de snelle opmars die extreme en gewelddadige stemmen in de MAGA-beweging maken.
Ook lijkt de beweging een campagne te zijn gestart om de ideologie in Europa te verspreiden. Ongeveer een vijfde van de respondenten zou blij zijn met een project als 'Make Europe Great Again' (MEGA) in de stijl van MAGA.
Veel van de stromingen binnen MAGA worden niet door een meerderheid van de Nederlanders gesteund. 15 tot 25 procent van Nederland kan zich vinden in de ideeën van het tech-libertarisme, de politieke denkbeelden die gangbaar zijn in Silicon Valley, alt-right, het christelijk nationalisme en het anti-institutionalisme, dat zich verzet tegen een 'wereldwijde samenzwering van kwaadaardige overheden'. Sommige losse elementen van die ideologieën vinden wel steun onder een grotere groep. Zo is 46 procent van Nederland het eens met de stelling van president Trump dat er 'shithole countries' bestaan waar mensen 'niet in staat zijn tot goed bestuur'.
Het onderzoeksinstituut, dat een vragenlijst voorlegde aan 4297 Nederlanders die representatief zijn voor de bevolking, ziet weinig verschil tussen de geslachten en leeftijden in hoe ontvankelijk mensen zijn voor MAGA. Jonge vrouwen tussen de 18 en 34 jaar vormen een uitzondering: zij lijken bijzonder onontvankelijk voor de rechtse ideologie uit Amerika. Jonge mannen van dezelfde leeftijd wijken in hun steun voor MAGA niet af van oudere mannen en vrouwen
Poetin heeft niet veel tijd meer, zei Volodymyr Zelensky in München, en hij bedoelde meer dan alleen leeftijd of gezondheid. De uitspraak valt samen met het raadselachtige verdwijnen van de Russische president uit de openbaarheid en een nieuwe, door de VS gestelde deadline om de oorlog nog vóór de zomer te beëindigen.[
Zelensky’s boodschap: tijd werkt tegen Poetin Tijdens de Münchense Veiligheidsconferentie grapte Zelensky dat hij jonger is dan de 73‑jarige Poetin, om daaraan toe te voegen: “Hij heeft niet veel tijd.” De zaal lachte, maar Zelensky benadrukte dat de opmerking serieus was: volgens hem kan Poetin “niet leven zonder oorlog” en is hij een “slaaf van de oorlog”, terwijl de Russische economie en het regime steeds afhankelijker worden van permanente mobilisatie en onderdrukking. Er zijn ook steeds meer aanwijzingen dat de Russiche elite genoeg heeft van hem van en van geldverslindende oolrog
De timing van Zelensky’s woorden is niet toevallig: Poetin is al meer dan een week niet in het openbaar gezien, terwijl Russische staatsmedia vooral met vooraf opgenomen beelden werken. Eerder voedden soortgelijke verdwijningen al geruchten over geheime medische behandelingen, aangewakkerd door beelden waarop zijn handen opgezwollen lijken en hij zenuwachtig zijn vingers beweegt. Het Kremlin ontkent hardnekkig dat er gezondheidsproblemen zijn, maar kan de speculatie nauwelijks nog wegmasseren.
Een waarschuwing aan Moskou én Washington Zelensky’s “tijd”-frame is ook een politiek signaal richting Washington en Europa. De regering‑Trump heeft opnieuw een harde deadline gezet: uiterlijk in juni moet er een vredesakkoord liggen, anders dreigt extra druk op zowel Kyiv als Moskou. Door te zeggen dat Poetin weinig tijd heeft, suggereert Zelensky dat niet Oekraïne, maar het Kremlin onder tijdsdruk staat – geopolitiek, economisch én in de persoon van de president zelf. Tegelijk probeert hij zijn westerse bondgenoten duidelijk te maken dat snelle concessies aan Rusland slechts een adempauze zouden kopen voor een leider die volgens hem alleen door oorlog aan de macht kan blijven.
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Pied Currawong
Scientific Name: Strepera graculina
Description: The Pied Currawong is a large, mostly black bird, with a bright yellow eye. Small patches of white are confined to the under tail, the tips and bases of the tail feathers and a small patch towards the tip of each wing (visible in flight). The bill is large and black and the legs are dark grey-black. Both sexes are similar, although the female may sometimes be greyer on the underparts. Young Pied Currawongs are duller and browner than the adults.
Similar species: Two other species of currawong are found in Australia. The Grey Currawong, Strepera versicolor, lives in Australia's south, while the Black Currawong, S. fuliginosa, is restricted to Tasmania. Both of these species differ from the Pied Currawong in lacking white on the rump. The Grey Currawong is variable across its range, grey in the east, blacker in Tasmania and browner in the west, with regional differences in the amounts of white in the wing. Another Australian species that is sometimes confused with the Pied Currawong is the Australian Magpie, Gymnorhina tibicen, although the two are quite different in plumage. The Magpie has a grey and black bill and a red-brown eye. The Australian Magpie also has large areas of white on the body.
Distribution: Pied Currawongs are found throughout eastern Australia, from northern Queensland to Victoria, but is absent from Tasmania.
Habitat: The Pied Currawong prefers forests and woodlands, and has become well adapted to suburban areas. Throughout its range it is common and familiar.
Seasonal movements: Outside the breeding season large flocks of Pied Currawongs form, but at most other times these birds are seen alone, in pairs or in family groups. In the north of their range they tend to stay in the same areas year round, while in the south, they may move from the higher areas to the lowlands, especially in the colder regions.
Feeding: Pied Currawongs feed on a variety of foods including small lizards, insects, caterpillars and berries. They also take a large number of small and young birds, especially around urban areas where suitable cover is scarce. Larger prey, up to the size of a young possum, is also taken, and birds will occasionally hunt as a group. Prey may be stored in a 'larder' (hung on a hook or in a tree fork or crevice) and either eaten straight away or, in the case of larger prey, over a period of time.
Breeding: The Pied Currawong's nest is a bowl of sticks, lined with grasses and other soft material. The material is gathered by both sexes, but the female builds the nest, which is placed in a high tree fork, up to 20 m above the ground. The female incubates the eggs, and the male feeds her. The male also supplies food to the female for the first week after the chicks hatch and she feeds the chicks.
Calls: The main call is a loud "currawong", which gives the bird its name. Other frequent sounds include deep croaks and a wolf whistle.
Minimum Size: 44cm
Maximum Size: 51cm
Average size: 48cm
Average weight: 287g
Breeding season: July to January
Clutch Size: 3
Incubation: 21 days
Nestling Period: 30 days
(Source: www.birdsinbackyards.net/species/Strepera-graculina)
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© Chris Burns 2026
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